The teenage Olympic medallist, who came out this week, is said to be
romantically involved with the 39-year-old writer behind the acclaimed 2008
biopic Milk

Tom Daley, the Olympic diver, is understood to be in a relationship with an Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriter and gay rights activist 20 years his senior.

The 19-year-old British athlete won widespread praise and congratulations when he announced in a YouTube message earlier this week that he was going out with another man.

Now it has been reported that his boyfriend is Dustin Lance Black, 39, who won an Academy Award for his script for the 2008 film Milk, about Harvey Milk, one of America’s first openly gay elected public officials.

Daley and Black were photographed together looking “chummy” outside a cafe in Hollywood in October, prompting a US gay news website to speculate at the time that they might be an item.

However, it was only after the teenage Olympic medallist made his high-profile announcement on Monday that this became more than just a rumour.

The pair declined to comment directly on the nature of their relationship on Wednesday but made oblique references to it.

Daley said in a message to his fans: “Thanks for your support. Still Tom. Still diving. Going for gold in 2016 [at the Rio Olympics]. What I am or who I date shouldn't matter.”

Meanwhile, Black, who has just returned from a visit to Moscow and St Petersburg to attend a screening of Milk, jokingly played down the huge interest in his relationship with Daley.

He said: “Slept all day today after my trip to Russia. Did I miss anything?”

The pair were introduced by mutual friends at the Soho Hotel in London earlier this year and Daley has since made several trips to California, where Black lives, according to The Sun.

Black, who grew up in a Mormon family in America’s conservative South, was lauded for the powerful speech pleading for greater acceptance of gay and lesbian people that he gave when he received the Oscar for best original screenplay for Milk in 2009.

He said: “When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas, to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk.

“And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me the hope one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could even fall in love and one day get married.

“I want to thank my mum, who has always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to.”

Black, whose other scripts include 2011’s J Edgar, directed by Clint Eastwood, has previously spoken of his struggles with his sexuality when he was growing up.

Describing a childhood crush on another boy, he said in 2008: “My very second thought was, 'I'm sick, I'm wrong, I'm going to hell. And if I ever admit it, I'll be hurt, and I'll be brought down.'”

Daley said in his YouTube message: “I've never really had a serious relationship to talk about. Now I kind of feel ready to talk about my relationships.

"Come spring this year, my life changed massively when I met someone and it made me feel so happy, so safe and everything just feels great. And that someone is a guy."

The diver, whose father Rob died from brain cancer in May 2011, also revealed that several members of his family had advised him to keep quiet about his sexuality.

Daley, who is originally from Plymouth, became one of Britain’s youngest ever Olympians when he competed at the 2008 Beijing Olympics aged 14.

He won two gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010 and a bronze in the men's 10m platform event at London 2012.